


homage

by catalysis



Series: devoted [3]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Kinda, M/M, POV Second Person, Pining, Red String of Fate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:35:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28336284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catalysis/pseuds/catalysis
Summary: the way he says your name should be a taunt, but you hear it as a promise.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou & Kageyama Tobio, Kageyama Tobio/Oikawa Tooru
Series: devoted [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1941310
Comments: 14
Kudos: 64





	homage

**Author's Note:**

> again, the string i write abt is not inherently romantic. that being said, you can interpret these charas' relationships however you'd like. reference to established atshn from the previous fic, but it's like one line and atsumu isn't even named lol.

You think that you would be a lot better off if your string tied you to a volleyball. Gold wound between yellow and blue, laid perpendicular to narrow stitches. If you were tied pretty and perfect to something you’ve been chasing for your whole life. Something you’ll keep chasing forever.

But you’re not, and as it is, your string pulls you through a childhood spent with your teeth then hands pressed into scuffed leather. And then into middle school where you meet someone with eyes very much (too much) like your own. They gleam with something more vicious than victory.

His regal posture he offers to everyone, but the haughty sneers are reserved for you. You wonder if that makes you special. It has to.

But even then, he’s warm where you’re frigid. His team senses this. His team, not yours, never yours, not even after he graduates.

They ask you, through glances over shoulders, in whispers to each other, _why are you so cold?_

_Well_ , you say, with your hands raised to frame the blinding lights of the gym, _I was never let in_.

* * *

You meet your soulmate at the end of middle school and you're convinced that he is the closest thing to volleyball you could have been tied to. His eyes are wide, overflowing with hunger. It’s raw desire there, and he lets you mold it into something more akin to a spear, honed and definite. A vassal and his king. You give him flight, and he gives you devotion.

You tell him once about your sharpest memories from middle school. Before the abandonment and before the loss made their places in your chest, there was admiration, warm and subtle. There was always that admiration, even through the roughest patches of your first year.

Your soulmate is always thinking about moving forward, looking up. _Do you want closure?_ he asks, because that’s what would make sense to him. That’s what he would want.

_I don’t know what I want_ , you confess. What would closure even entail? Closure implies an ending, and you don’t know if that’s quite what you need.

* * *

Your soulmate calls him the Grand King. Fitting. He's you, if you were good, better, Great. If you were something other than you are.

You are still you though, no matter how many times you check. No matter how many dreams you have where your image melts away, leaving someone else in its place.

You are you, but you have always built yourself from other people. Ideals from your grandfather. Steadfastness from your sister. A softer kind of care from your soulmate. The way you play, and even the way you _think_ about volleyball from the person who’d only let you learn via observation.

You wonder when your reflection stopped looking like him. His eyes are different now. But so are yours. The sharpness in his eyes has been replaced by someone smoother and well-worn, edges filed by sand and water and time. The quietness in yours molded into something bright, something worthy of reflecting the glint in your soulmates eyes.

You get a photo, no caption, no explanation, just two faces staring back at you. And you imagine for a second that you are there too. There in South America with the two halves of your heart. If they’re across the globe, what is left for you here? Nothing. So you run faster and farther. Your soulmate found love in a follower. You wonder if you could ever follow far enough to be loved.

You wonder if he sees you as you are now. Or if that last glimpse he got through the net is his only memory of you. Or if he even thinks of you at all. He has to. He _has_ to.

Your memories of him are tinged with something bittersweet and hazy. But that lens doesn’t carry over to now. Now, you see him as everything he is; everything that he has built himself to be.

The gossip makes its rounds when he joins the Argentinian national team. 

_You went to school with him_ , didn’t you?

He taught me everything I know, you consider saying, because even if it’s a lie, it’s poetic, isn’t it?

_Yeah_ , you say. Because, outwardly, that’s all you are to each other. Teammates turned rivals turned basically strangers. No one knows that he’s something more than that, everything more than that, to you. 

You remember the curve of his body jumping into a serve. You remember the snap of it as his palm hits the volleyball. You wonder, like you have always wondered, what it would be like to feel those muscles flexing under your palms.

You remember the way he said your name. Mockingly, angrily. But he said it enough that you’re convinced he can’t ever forget it. 

The way he says your name should be a taunt, but you hear it as a promise. A promise that he will always be better than you. That he’ll always be a beacon; something for you to chase after.

But he says your name like an apology sometimes too. No mocking honorific, no dismissive tone. Just him and you in the quietloud moments after a match, before a flight. 

He doesn’t quite know how to really offer an apology, and you don’t know how you’d accept one either. So for now, there’s just—

_Tobio_.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/nyamayachi)


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